


Breathe (Freely) Again

by escribo



Category: Suits (TV)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2012-10-25
Updated: 2012-10-25
Packaged: 2017-11-17 00:11:26
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,403
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/545357
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/escribo/pseuds/escribo
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>AU. Mike is a photographer</p>
            </blockquote>





	Breathe (Freely) Again

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by a documentary on modern art I was watching whilst stuffing envelope (and inflicting 100 tiny papercuts), which happened to coincide with a comment on Twitter. The letters didn't get finished and I have another fic I didn't mean to write. Also, no dialogue, which is really odd for me.

Mike's first camera was a ten dollar Kodak point and shoot from a pawn shop.  His Gram had given it to him when he was a bored eleven year old still stuck in the hospital a month after his parents had died.  He took pictures of the nurses, of his cast, of the hospital food, hiding behind drawn curtains and riding the elevators to other floors as if he was on a secret mission, learning how not to be seen.  In the evenings, his Gram would come to sit with him after work and collect his roll of film from the day, promising to bring back an envelope of pictures in the morning from the corner drugstore's one hour processing. She never forgot, and always listened raptly as he explained why he'd taken this shot or that, and it was how he grew to know her as more than the woman who would pinch his cheeks at Thanksgiving. 

When he came home, he took pictures of the spaces where his mom and dad should have been, where his life had been--the slightly rucked up rug in the kitchen his mom always stood on as she washed the dishes, the leaky bathroom faucet his father had always promised to fix, the army of G.I. Joe men lying as if dead in a pile beneath the radiator in his room. Mike would never play with again. Instead, he traded them to a boy with dark eyes and a smart mouth for a Polaroid camera and a B+ on a math test that Mike could have made an A on if he'd bothered to try.   

When he was in high school, Mike had three shoe boxes filled with pictures and a considerably nicer camera that he'd worked for a whole summer washing dishes in a coffee shop to buy second hand.  It was a Nikon F60 and he liked the way it felt in his hands, substantial and real, and he carried it everywhere, taking pictures of the birds on the powerlines, the graffiti in the subway, and the people in his neighborhood who would wave and smile when they saw him coming because he'd always give them the prints of their kids.  His art teacher introduced him to black and white film at nearly the same time and it was a revelation. 

His friends featured heavily as subjects during this time, too, willingly contorting themselves into whatever ridiculous pose Mike could dream up to make it seem as if they were defying gravity.  He'd drive Trevor crazy fiddling with the aperature and spending long minutes framing his shots until Trevor would mutter _just take the goddamn picture already, Mikey._.  Jenny wouldn't complain at all but just smile in her easy way, her eyes focused steadily on Mike behind his camera, while Mike wished he could love her the same way she loved him, the way Trevor loved them both.

The first time Mike took a picture of Harvey, they were still strangers.  Mike was twenty-eight and nervously considering the logistics of his first show, which was still a year off, but at the moment Harvey stepped into his frame, he was on a fifteen minute break from photographing tiny, bored catalogue models on the courthouse steps across from Foley Square for pay.  It wasn't his favorite kind of gig but it beat taking family portraits down at the mall, which he'd done for three months right after he was kicked out of college. He got off three shots, focusing on the man in the flashy suit rather than the gorgeous woman at his side, before he lowered his camera, grinning at flashy suit's frown. He shrugged and turned back to his malnourished women awkwardly posing in low end career separates and four-inch heels with all the grace of heroin addicts, though his thoughts kept returning to broad shoulders tapering to a slim waist and a slick haircut. The guy wasn't even his _type_ as far as Mike had a type. Whatever it was, he knew it definitely didn't include Fifth Avenue lawyers in designer suits but those photos were still his favorite of the day.

The second time he saw Harvey, it was nearly six months later but Mike would have recognized him anywhere, even though he'd traded the suit for jeans and a dark blue button down. He was flipping through a bin of old records at an open air market in the Bronx where Mike had been snapping pictures for the last hour before he began thinking of grabbing a coffee and cab back home. He'd only just rounded one last corner, because that was always where the best shots were hidden, when he'd spotted the same slick haircut and razor sharp cheekbones. Mike couldn't resist lifting his twenty year old Leica M6, the best in his collection of two, and spent a happy few minutes making minor adjustments before he got off one careful shot, the shutter snapping with an easy whisper, before he got another frown. It took twenty minutes to get Harvey's name, another ten to get his number. Trevor always said Mike lacked any serious game with either sex but as he raised the camera one last time, swearing he was going to call that night, Harvey stared at him steadily, something like a smile on his lips for the first time.

His first show was promising to be an utter disaster. He thought the space was too small and the lighting all wrong, and he was sure no one would show up, which wasn't quite true. He was mostly afraid Harvey wouldn't show up, or if he did, he'd mock Mike's skinny trousers and even skinnier tie. Harvey surprised him on both counts by showing up early and saying nothing. Instead, he made a slow circuit of the gallery, hands in his pockets as Mike hovered behind him, resisting the urge to poke him for some sort of reaction because he was nervous, and if this was utter crap he wanted to know while there was still time to go hide in the men's room. 

Mike had gone with portraits, even though he'd hated taking them when he was a younger man. Now they seemed important. He'd gone back to those families he'd grown up with in Brooklyn and took pictures of the kids of the kids he'd shot as a kid himself. He'd gone to his Gram's nursing home and taken pictures of war vets and retired teachers, of paper skinned grandmas and the kindly nurses who mostly just looked tired at the end of their shifts but lovely for all that. He'd gone to Jenny who was as beautiful now as when she was sixteen, and Trevor who had grown lean and tough after serving three years of a five year sentence for dealing weed to cops and who still muttered _just take the goddamn picture already, Mikey_ if Mike even looked like he was going to do more than point and click. He'd gone to Harvey and shown him the way Mike saw him, tousled haired and sleepy eyed, still in bed--their bed--looking at Mike rather than the camera, and really seeing him. 

They were alone with a bottle of champagne, making out in a corner because it was over and Harvey had said he was proud, which made Mike feel ten times dopier than the alcohol had. Mike admitted that his favorite picture was one he didn't even take himself, and would never hang on a gallery wall. It was late when Harvey had showed it to Mike, mixed in between poorly lit images of art critics and society wives mingling with Brooklyn shopkeepers and Mike's high school friends. Mike grinned to see himself caught in the middle of a very animated conversation with the gorgeous woman who had been at Harvey side all that time ago on the courthouse steps. Jessica had been very complimentary of his work, particularly caught by Harvey's portrait, by the softness in his mouth and the spark in his eyes, surprising him when she said, _you must really love what you do_. Mike had blundered through ten minutes of blithering about film speed and filters before spotting Harvey snapping the picture. _Yeah,_ Mike had said then, looking at Harvey rather than the phone that's not a camera , and really seeing him. _It's definitely love._


End file.
